8
THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 3, 2014
Rock and Pop
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated
lives; it's advisable to check in advance to con rm
engagements.
Les Claypool's Duo de Twang
The California writer, singer, and power bassist
Claypool has been shaking things up in the rock
world---regularly, forcefully, and weirdly---since the
début o his band Primus, in the mid-eighties, known
as much for their costumes and dramatics as for their
musical attack. Now Claypool and his collaborator
Bryan Kehoe are performing as Duo de Twang, giv-
ing a twisted Americana reading to covers (including
Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box," Johnny Horton's
"Battle o New Orleans," and the Bee Gees' "Stayin'
Alive") as well as originals. Carrying on the dramatic
tradition, Claypool and Kehoe will be playing in the
McKittrick Hotel's large performance space as patrons
exit the Punchdrunk theatre company's ive-story,
multi-perspective, interactive version o "Macbeth,"
called "Sleep No More." (The Heath at the McKit-
trick Hotel, 542 W. 27th St. 212-564-1662. Feb. 26-27.)
"Let's Zydeco!"
Leroy Thomas, born in Lake Charles and raised in
Elton, Louisiana, began his musical journey by tak-
ing up the drums, like his father, Leo. But the lure
o the accordion was too strong, and now he leads
his own group, the Zydeco Roadrunners, lashing a
distinctive squeezebox with an American- lag design.
They're in town Feb. 28. C. J. Chenier takes over on
March 2. (Connolly's, 121 W. 45th St. letszydeco.com.)
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
Malkmus has now released more albums with the
Jicks than with Pavement, the nineties-era indie-
rock band that irst brought him fame. The Jicks'
latest collection, "Wig Out at Jagbags," is illed
with the twisty wordplay and sterling melodies that
have distinguished Malkmus's work for decades. On
more than a few o its songs ("Chartjunk," "Rumble
at the Rainbo"), Malkmus confronts the fact that
rock music is tra icking in explicit nostalgia and
that his audience is aging at the same rate that he
is. And yet the old dog has some new tricks, as on
the almost-R. & B. ballad "J Smoov" and the proggy
album closer, "Surreal Teenagers." (Feb. 26, at the
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 212-533-2111; Feb.
27, at the Music Hall o Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St.,
Brooklyn. 718-486-5400.)
Public Service Broadcasting
J. Willgoose, Esq., and Wrigglesworth, who make
up this intriguing English duo, comb through their
country's vast ilm archives, hunting for fragments
o public-information ilms to layer over their music.
They are most comfortable performing propulsive
suites o melodic krautrock, although the music often
plays second iddle to the surprisingly lyrical samples,
many o which were culled from ilms produced in
the nineteen-thirties. Onstage, the pair perform in
front o a wall o vintage televisions showing footage
from the original movies. (Mercury Lounge, 217
E. Houston St. 212-260-4700. March 1.)
St. Vincent
The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie
Clark, who records and performs as St. Vincent, cre-
ated her irst guitar out o cardboard and rubber bands
when she was ive years old. A quarter century later,
she's one o the closest things the art-rock world has
to a bona- ide shredder, though her catchy melodies,
complex arrangements, and clever wordplay also make
her stand out as a consummate pop artist. Her talents
attracted the likes o David Byrne, and the two teamed
up to make 2012's "Love This Giant," a horn- illed,
grooved-out album. Now the Texas-raised chanteuse
the allman brothers band is from the Deep South, but for decades the
group has owned the Beacon Theatre, and has performed there more than two
hundred and twenty times since 1989. The Allmans' connection to the city runs
deep: their first gold record, "At Fillmore East," was recorded in 1971 at Bill
Graham's legendary hall, where they took the stage so often they were known by
some as his house band. The group, which is celebrating its forty-fifth anniversary,
returns to town on March 7 for fourteen nights, and it is likely to be its last run
here. Two key members, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, have declared that
they are leaving, and the founding member Gregg Allman, who is sixty-six, has
announced that the band will stop touring at the end of the year. Southern rock
wouldn't exist as we know it without the Allman Brothers Band, but what makes
them so great is that they defy easy categorization. Their songs draw on the best of
American blues and jazz, as in their instrumental "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,"
from their second album, "Idlewild South." Onstage, they've been known to stretch
songs out into forty-minute jams. Of course, the band has broken up a few times
in the past, shuffling its membership and returning with even more power than
before. Don't risk missing out on their dual-guitar, polyrhythmic magic.
On the other end of the musical spectrum, the British act the xx is bringing
its intimate electronica to the Park Avenue Armory March 19-29. The trio is
presenting two to three shows a night for audiences of just forty people, who will
join them under the soaring ceiling of the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot drill hall,
a space that evokes an airplane hangar or the train sheds of Europe. Details about
the shows are scant, but they are said to be modelled on the xx's similarly secretive
gigs at the Manchester International Festival last year, where audience members
sat inches away from the band.
---John Donohue
IGHT FE
It's last call for the Allman Brothers Band, and the xx take over the Park Avenue Armory.
SPRING pr iew
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN MALTA